Poissible Treatment for CFS

The company has also been working on new a new treatment using a combination of drugs for treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which is suffered by about 1 in 400 people in the West. A patent on this was filed in February this year.

Currently the only effective treatment is a combination of graded exercise and cognitive behavioural therapy that typically takes months to years.

Dr Geraldine Rodgers, Technology Manager for Cambridge Enterprise Seed Funds and a Director of DeltaG, said that patent protection was vital for turning ideas into products, so these were important steps forward for the company.

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Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is medically defined as prolonged experience of fatigue,characterised by inability to perform prolonged exercise, muscle pain and, sometimes, objective (biochemically measured) damage, lack of 'energy', excessive or abberant sleep and other features. It is a controversial diagnosis, with some doctors denying that it exists as a discrete disease, because no common mechanism has been found to explain it. Treatment is limited to graded exercise programmes, behavioural and pharmacological behaviour modification, and 'wait and see'.

Delta G has identified a potential biochemical mechanism for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), based on understanding of energy metabolism and its control. This mechanism is testable, and treatable using specific combinations of existing drugs. In essence, we 'reset the throttle' on the energy generating systems of the cell so that more metabolic energy is available on demand to the patient.

This is unlikely to be a treatment for all CFS. What is presently diagnosed as CFS will probably be found to be several diseases, based on the patients' biochemical status. Thus our approach does not claim to be a panacea. But if it works it will provide a genuine cure for some of the more seriously, organically affected sufferers from CFS.

More details on the science of this programme will be posted here when patents are filed and the initial experimental programme has been kicked off.